Thu, 29 September 2011
reprinted from the guardian news page he BBC is to axe Doctor Who Confidential, the BBC3 spin-off from its sci-fi drama, as part of the corporation's ongoing cuts programme. Doctor Who Confidential, which features behind-the-scenes footage from the making of Doctor Who as well as interviews with the cast and crew, has aired in an early evening slot on BBC3 since 2005, when the corporation revived the main series with Christopher Eccleston as the ninth Time Lord. However, with the corporation facing budget cuts of up to 20% across its output as part of its Delivering Quality First initiative, BBC controller Zai Bennett has chosen to axe the show at the end of its current series. Bennett is understood to be pursuing a strategy of focusing investment on original commissions in post-watershed time slots. Since taking over, he has decommissioned shows including Ideal, Hotter Than My Daughter, Coming of Age and long-running sitcom Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. Speaking last month at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, Bennett said: "It's about focusing my budget on 9pm and 10.30pm; those are the time slots that count. Budgets are tight, so we have to be sensible with the money we have." Mark Thompson, the BBC director general, will unveil the corporation's cost-cutting strategy – the outcome of the DQF process – on 6 October. It is thought to include proposals to exploit greater "synergies" between BBC1 and BBC3, with the digital channel acting as a "nursery slope" for its terrestrial cousin. BBC3 will also fill a greater proportion of its 7pm to 9pm slots with repeats of BBC1 shows. A spokeswoman for the BBC said: "Doctor Who Confidential has been a great show for BBC3 over the years but our priority now is to build on original British commissions, unique to the channel."
Direct download: TDP_205a_Confidential_Cancelled_news.mp3
Category:podcast -- posted at: 11:55am UTC |
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Sat, 24 September 2011
from wikipedia. "Closing Time" is the twelfth episode of the sixth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, and was first broadcast on BBC One, BBC America and Space on 24 September 2011.
[edit] Plot summaryNearly two hundred years have passed for the Doctor after leaving Amy and Rory in "The God Complex"; and the Doctor is on a farewell tour as he knows he has one more day in his relative time before his death (depicted in "The Impossible Astronaut"), saying goodbye to his past companions. He stops by Craig ("The Lodger"), finding he is living with his girlfriend Sophie, moved into a new home, and now raising their baby, Alfie. Craig, tending to Alfie alone while Sophie is away for the weekend, suspects the Doctor is investigating something alien. As the Doctor leaves, he notices an strange electrical disturbance in the area, and decides to investigate. Craig, while at a new department store with Alfie, discovers the Doctor working in the toy department. The Doctor reveals that he has traced the electrical disturbances to the store and using the job to allow him to investigate more. The Doctor and Craig enter a lift and find themselves teleported to a Cyberman spacecraft, but the Doctor manages to reverse the teleporter and disables it. As Craig returns home, the Doctor sees Amy and Rory shopping, but stays out of their sight. The Doctor continues to follow rumours of a store clerk's disappearance and of a "silver rat". With Craig's help, the Doctor enters the store and catches a Cybermat, which has been siphoning small amounts of energy to the spacecraft. The Doctor also encounters a malfunctioning Cyberman in the building's basement, and is curious how it arrived in the store. At Craig's house, while the two are distracted, the Cybermat reactivates, but they are able to stop it, and the Doctor reprograms the unit to track down the Cybermen signal. The Doctors leaves on his own to locate the Cybermen at the store, but Craig shortly follows, bringing Alfie along. The Doctor finds the spaceship actually sits below the store, underground, accessed by a tunnel from a changing room. The ship has been slowly siphoning energy from the store's power lines, reactivating its crew. The Doctor is captured by the Cybermen, who tell him that their ship crashed long ago, but with this new energy, will soon have enough power to convert the human race. Craig, leaving Alfie with a store clerk, follows the Doctor into the tunnel, and is also captured and placed into a conversion machine. The Doctor reveals his own impending death and urges Craig to fight, but the conversion appears to be complete until Alfie's cries over the closed-circuit television echo in the ship. Craig fights the conversion, sending the rest of the Cybermen into overload as they painfully experience the emotions they have repressed. The Doctor and Craig escape via the teleporter as the ship explodes, the blast contained by the cavern. The Doctor slips away unseen, but Craig returns home to find that the Doctor has used time travel to clean the mess from the previous night. The Doctor tells Craig that Alfie now has a much higher opinion of his dad. The Doctor leaves just before Sophie returns. Nearby, the Doctor tells the TARDIS he knows this is his last trip in her and offers some parting words to a small group of children. In the far future, River Song, recently made a Doctor of Archaeology, reviews eyewitness accounts from those children, and also notes the date and location of the Doctor's death. She is interrupted by Madame Kovarian and agents of The Silence; Kovarian tells River that she is still theirs, and will be the one to kill the Doctor. They place her in an astronaut's suit and submerge her in the lake to await the Doctor. [edit] ContinuityTwo hundred years have passed for the Doctor since the events of "The God Complex", taking him to the age his older self was in "The Impossible Astronaut".[2] Multiple events in the episode correspond to those of "The Impossible Astronaut": the Doctor takes from Craig's home the "TARDIS blue" envelopes he uses to bring Amy, Rory, River, Canton Delaware and his younger self to Lake Silencio; Craig gives him the Stetson hat he wears at the start of that episode[3]; and the "impossible astronaut" is confirmed to be River Song. The Cybermen, like those in "A Good Man Goes to War", do not bear the Cybus Industries logo on their chests. Cybermats are shown for the first time in the revived series. In the classic series, they appeared in Tomb of the Cybermen, The Wheel in Space and Revenge of the Cybermen.[3] The Doctor stops by to see Craig before he dies, as the Tenth Doctor popped in on his former companions before regenerating in The End of Time.[4][5] The Doctor claims to be able to "speak 'baby'", as he did in "A Good Man Goes to War". The Doctor expresses his dislike for Craig's "redecorated" house in a variation of lines spoken by the Second Doctor in The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors, and Craig explains to the Doctor that the reason his house looks different is that it is a different house from the one he had in "The Lodger"; Craig also remarks that he has inspected the upstairs level, alluding to the false story shown in "The Lodger".[6] The Doctor echoes himself in the classic series serial Revenge of the Cybermen when he recites the mini-poem "Not a rat, a Cybermat" from the novelization of Revenge of the Cybermen.[7][8] Amy appears in an ad for Petrichor perfume, with the tagline, "For the girl who's tired of waiting." The concept of petrichor was used as a psychic password in "The Doctor's Wife" and means "the smell of dust after rain".[6][9] The Doctor frequently refers to Amy as "the girl who waited". [edit] ProductionWriter Gareth Roberts said in an interview that he was considering bringing the character of Craig back when James Corden was cast and he saw his performance, saying that "it already felt like he was one of the Who family". It was also his idea to bring back the Cybermen, because there were no other returning monsters in the series and he thought "there should be a sense of history about the Doctor's final battle to save Earth before he heads off to meet his death".[2] [edit] Cast notesThis episode marks Lynda Baron's third involvement with Doctor Who, having provided vocals for the "Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon", heard in The Gunfighters, and appeared in Enlightenment as Wrack. The accompanying Doctor Who Confidential to "Closing Time" is entitled "Open All Hours" in honour of Baron's role in the sitcom of the same name.[6] BBC Radio 1 DJ Greg James appears in a non-speaking cameo role, as a man shopping for lingerie.[10] [edit] Broadcast and reception"Closing Time" was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 24 September 2011[11] and in the United States on BBC America on the same date.[12] It achieved overnight ratings of 5.3 million viewers, coming in second for its time slot behind All-Star Family Fortunes.[13] [edit] Critical receptionThe episode received generally positive reviews, with critics praising the comic interplay between Smith and Corden. Jack Pelling of Celluloid Heroes Radio praised Roberts' deftly crafted comic script, and described it as "one of the most enjoyable episodes of Doctor Who in recent years".[14] Dan Martin of The Guardian questioned the decision to air a standalone episode as the penultimate show of the series, calling "Closing Time" "something of a curiosity" as well as writing positively about "Smith and Cordon’s Laurel and Hardy double act".[3] Gavin Fuller of The Daily Telegraph awarded the episode three out of five stars, comparing Smith's performance favourably to that of Patrick Troughton.[15] Neela Debnath of The Independent said it was an "intriguing change of pace" and succeeded with "great comedic moments" and the "brilliant chemistry between the Doctor and Craig". She praised Corden for excelling after his "average" performance in "The Lodger".[16] Patrick Mulkern, writing for Radio Times, thought that the ending was an "emotional overload...but what better way to deal with the emotionally deprived Cybermen?" He was pleased with the "sweet cameo" from Amy and Rory and the "tense coda" with River Song and Kovarian.[17] IGN's Matt Risley rated the episode 7.5 out of 10, praising the chemistry between Smith and Corden as well as Smith's interaction with the baby, but was disappointed with the Cybermen, who he said "never really delivered on the threat or horror fans know they're capable of".[18] SFX magazine reviewer Rob Power gave the episode three and a half out of five stars, saying it "[worked] wonders" as a light-hearted episode before the finale and with "properly bad" Cybermen. Though he thought the Cyberman lacked "real menance" and Craig escaped in a "cheesy way", he considered the main focus to be on the Doctor's "farewell tour" and praised Smith's performance. He thought that the moments of "sad-eyed loneliness and resignation" added weight to "what would otherwise have been a paper-thin episode". He also praised the ending for bringing things together for the finale, though he thought the final scene with River Song felt "a little tacked-on".[9] [edit] References
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Mon, 19 September 2011
reprinted from wikipedia with thanks and respect The God ComplexFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The God Complex" is the eleventh episode of the sixth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, and was first broadcast on BBC One, BBC America and Space on 17 September 2011.
[edit] Plot summaryThe TARDIS, while traveling to a new planet, arrives in what appears to be a 1980's Earth hotel, but the Doctor recognizes it as an alien structure specifically designed to take that appearance. They soon meet a group of four, humans Rita, Howie, Joe, and the alien Gibbis, each who had previously been taken from their routine lives and found themselves in the hotel. The four explain that there is a minotaur-like beast in the hotel that consumes others. It does this by enticing them to enter one of the many rooms in the hotel which contains their greatest fears, upon which they become brainwashed to "praise him" and allow themselves to be taken, their bodies left without any signs of life; many others have experienced this, and photos of them and their fears cover many of the hotel's walls. The hotel is inescapable — its doors and windows walled up — and its halls and rooms can change on a whim. The Doctor, Amy, and Rory soon find the TARDIS has also disappeared, and the Doctor warns them from opening any door they are drawn to, for fear of being possessed. As the Doctor tries to ascertain the situation, Joe, already possessed, has been drawn away from the group and is killed by the beast. Howie soon becomes possessed after entering a room against the Doctor's warnings. The remaining group set up a trap to lure the beast into the hotel's parlor using Howie's voice, upon which the Doctor questions the trapped creature and learns it is in agony wishing for its end. The Doctor realises the hotel is really a prison for the creature, and the "fears" in each room are harmless illusions. Howie escapes from the group, allowing the beast to escape and chase him down, killing him before the Doctor can save him. While exploring more of the hotel, both Amy and the Doctor are separately lured to look into two specific rooms, facing their own fears. Rita soon follows the fate of Joe and Howie. The Doctor, Amy, Rory, and Gibbis regroup, and the Doctor surmises that the other three believed that some higher fate controlled their lives. The hotel and its rooms were, by design, meant to challenge their faith by fear to allow the beast to possess them. The Doctor identifies that Gibbis has survived due to the extreme cowardice of his species, while Rory lacks any such faith to be broken. However, the Doctor realises that it is Amy's faith in him that is being challenged; Amy soon becomes possessed like the others. As the beast comes for Amy, the Doctor and the others grab her and take her to the room of her entrancement. Inside, they find the illusion of young Amy, Amelia, still waiting for the return of her "raggedy Doctor" ("The Eleventh Hour"). The Doctor asserts to Amy that he is "not a hero" but "just a mad man with a box" to break her faith in him; her faith broken, the beast outside the door collapses on the floor. As they watch, the hotel is revealed to be part of a large simulation; the Doctor identifies themselves aboard an automated prison spaceship, and the beast as a relative of the Nimon, a creature that feeds off the faith of others. The ship's automated systems had provided it "food" by bringing aboard creatures who had a strong faith. The Doctor identifies Amy's faith in him as the cause of their arrival on the ship. The beast mutters that "death would be a gift" for the Doctor before it passes away. The Doctor finds his TARDIS nearby, offering Gibbis a lift home. He then takes Amy and Rory back to their home on Earth, believing it best for the two to stop traveling with him for fear that their faith in him would lead to their deaths. The Doctor sets off alone in the TARDIS, contemplating these recent events. [edit] ContinuitySeveral references to past alien species are displayed throughout the wall of photos of the past victims of the beast: Tritovore, Silurian, Sontaran, Judoon, Cat Nun, and the Daleks are referenced as the nightmare faced by one of the late guests. The Doctor identifies the beast as being from a species who are close relatives to the Nimon, previously a foe in the serial The Horns of Nimon and audio drama Seasons of Fear; and the group witnesses two illusions of Weeping Angels, from the episodes "Blink", "The Time of Angels", and "Flesh and Stone".[1] Though the audience is not shown the contents of the room that the Doctor is lured to open, the sound of the TARDIS' cloister bell can be heard.[2] This episode is the third time in the television series where the Doctor has forced his companions to leave the TARDIS, following Susan Foreman and Sarah Jane Smith.[3] Young Amelia, played by Gillan's cousin Caitlin Blackwood, is shown waiting for her "raggedy Doctor" to return from the episode "The Eleventh Hour". The Doctor, being forced to break Amy's faith in him, repeats a previous event in The Curse of Fenric where the Seventh Doctor is forced to break Ace's faith in him.[4] [edit] ProductionToby Whithouse originally pitched the episode for the previous series with the idea of a hotel with shifting rooms.[5] Showrunner Steven Moffat thought that there were too many instances in which the characters were running through corridors in that series, so Whithouse wrote "The Vampires of Venice" instead and "The God Complex" was pushed to the next series.[6] The idea to have a Minotaur be the monster came from Whithouse's love for Greek mythology.[5] David Walliams, who plays Gibbis in this episode, previously appeared in the Fifth Doctor audio drama Phantasmagoria where he played two separate characters.[7] [edit] Outside referencesThe hotel and setting has been compared to Stanley Kubrick's film, The Shining, using similar composition such as long corridor shots.[8][9] [edit] Broadcast and reception"The God Complex" was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 17 September 2011[10] and on the same date in the United States on BBC America.[11] Overnight ratings showed that 5.2 million viewers watched the episode on BBC One, beaten by direct competition All-Star Family Fortunes on ITV1. This made Doctor Who third for the night behind The X Factor and Family Fortunes. The episode was ranked number 1 on BBC's iPlayer the day after it aired service and also was popular on social networking site Twitter, where the phrase "Amy and Rory" trended the night it aired.[12] [edit] Critical receptionThe episode received generally positive reviews from critics. Jack Pelling of Celluloid Heroes Radio praised look of the episode, describing it as "stylishly directed by Nick Hurran, whose use of Dutch camera angles and Hitchcock zooms gave the episode an impressive, cinematic quality."[13] Gavin Fuller of The Daily Telegraph awarded the episode 3 and a half stars, stating that "the surreal tone to the episode, helped camouflage the fact that the plot made very little sense."[14] Dan Martin of the Guardian was surprised by the exits of Amy and Rory stating that "since the reboot they've been big, climactic, end-of-the-universe tragedies." Martin also praised Karen Gillan for her performance and stated that her exit was "the kind of ending that would have been nice for Sarah-Jane, really." Martin also praised Smith's Doctor stating that we start to see the darkside more, particularly directed at himself and stronger than Tennant's portrayal. The main part of the episode Martin felt that it was "like a runaround bolted on to make way for the ending." Continuing to add that as has already been shown in this series the formula is not a recipe for success. Martin sums up the episode though by describing it as funny and thoughtful.[1] [edit] References
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Thu, 15 September 2011
Here is the explanation of the Blessing as seen in Torchwood Miracle Day |
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Mon, 12 September 2011
Taken from wikipedia with thanks and respect ay of the Daleks is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 1 January to 22 January 1972.
[edit] SynopsisRebels from a future Earth conquered by the Daleks travel to the 20th Century to prevent that from happening. But will their actions prevent that future, or make it inevitable? [edit] Plot
Sir Reginald Styles, a British diplomat trying to organise a peace conference to avert World War III, is in his study at the government-owned Auderly House when a soldier dressed in grey camouflage and wielding a futuristic looking pistol bursts in and holds him at gunpoint. However, before the guerrilla can fire, he vanishes, leaving Styles to shakily tell his secretary he has been visited by a ghost. As the conference is of vital international importance, UNIT is called in. The Chinese have pulled out of the conference and Styles will be flying to Peking to try to persuade them to rejoin, and nothing must interfere with the conference's success. However, when the Third Doctor, Jo and the Brigadier go over to Auderly House, Styles denies ever seeing the "ghost", even though the Doctor notes the presence of muddy footprints in the study. The guerrilla reappears on the grounds in a vortex-like effect, but he is intercepted by two huge humanoid aliens, Ogrons, who attack him and leave him for dead. UNIT soldiers discover the severely injured guerrilla and take him to the hospital while the Doctor examines his weapon and a small black box that was found in a nearby tunnel system. Styles leaves for Peking, while the Doctor discovers that the pistol, which is an ultrasonic disintegrator, is made of Earth materials, not alien, and that the box is a crude time machine, complete with a miniature dematerialisation circuit. As he tries to activate it, the vortex effect appears again and the guerrilla vanishes from the ambulance. The temporal feedback circuit on the time machine also overloads — as the Doctor explains to the Brigadier, it has blown a fuse. Since everything seems to be centred on Auderly House, the Doctor decides to spend the evening there. The night passes without incident, but in the day, three guerrillas appear from the time vortex — Anat, a woman who is in command of the mission, along with two men, Boaz and Shura. They come across a UNIT patrol and disintegrate the two soldiers while making their way to the house. In the study, the Doctor tries to reactivate the time machine, causing an alert to be sounded in the 22nd Century. Shura enters the house, but the Doctor subdues him with some Venusian karate. Shura begs the Doctor to turn off the box, as in the future, a human Controller reports to the Daleks that the machine has been activated. The Daleks command that once the spacetime coordinates of the box are confirmed, whoever is using that device must be exterminated. In the present, Anat and Boaz enter with Jo as their prisoner and demand that the machine be deactivated. The Doctor complies, and the conversation makes it apparent that the guerrillas believe that he is Styles, whom they are apparently here to assassinate. The Doctor shows them a newspaper to convince them otherwise, and Anat demands to know who the Doctor is. When Captain Mike Yates and Sergeant Benton enter the house to search for the missing patrol, the guerrillas usher the Doctor and Jo into the cellar where they tie them up. Finding the Doctor and Jo gone, Yates contacts the Brigadier, who tells them to search the grounds again. In the future, the Daleks order the Controller to send troops to the frequency they detected earlier, and activate a time vortex magnetron, so that anyone travelling between the two time zones will be drawn to the Controller's headquarters. In the past, Anat sends Shura to contact the future for more orders, but Shura only manages to retrieve a bomb from near the tunnel before being attacked by Ogrons. He is wounded, but manages to stumble away. In the cellar, Jo asks the Doctor why, if the guerrillas wanted to kill Styles, they do not just travel back to the previous day to try again, and the Doctor says that this is due to the "Blinovitch Limitation Effect". Before he can explain further, they are ushered back up to the study — the Brigadier is calling on the house phone. The Doctor is forced to pretend over the telephone that everything is fine at Auderly House. The Brigadier tells the Doctor that Styles has convinced the Chinese to rejoin the conference and that the delegates will arrive the next day. The Brigadier asks for reassurance that everything is all right, and the Doctor tells him it is, but the Brigadier gets suspicious when the Doctor asks him to also "tell it to the Marines." The Brigadier decides to go to the house and see for himself. Jo frees herself from her bonds and threatens to destroy the box the first guerrilla used, but Anat and Boaz tell her that it only worked for that person. Suddenly, the time vortex effect activates and Jo vanishes into the future, appearing in the Controller's headquarters due to the vortex magnetron. There, the Controller ingratiates himself with Jo, who tells him everything, including the exact time and location where she came from. The Daleks use this information and send a Dalek supported by Ogrons to the present, where they attack the house. Anat and Boaz fire back, and flee towards the tunnels. The Brigadier arrives just in time to gun down an Ogron, and the Doctor commandeers his jeep in pursuit of the two guerrillas. In the tunnels he meets a Dalek, and runs away, finding Anat and Boaz just as they activate their time machines, and is swept up in the same vortex. In the 22nd Century version of the tunnels, the Doctor and the guerrillas are separated when Ogrons pursue them. The Doctor climbs out of the tunnels onto the surface, where he sees a Dalek order Ogrons to exterminate some rebels. When the Controller informs the Daleks that Jo mentioned a "Doctor", the Daleks react violently, declaring that the Doctor is an enemy of the Daleks and must be exterminated. The Doctor stumbles into what appears to be a factory, and sees humans being used as slave labour, guarded by other humans. He is captured by an Ogron, and is being interrogated when the factory manager comes in and persuades the interrogator to let him speak to the Doctor. When they are alone, the manager asks the Doctor which guerrilla group he comes from, but the Doctor says he is not part of any group. Before any further conversation can take place, the Controller arrives, and takes the Doctor to see Jo. The manager contacts the guerrillas, who have made it back to their base with their leader, a man named Monia. The manager tells them of the Doctor, but he is discovered by an Ogron and killed. Monia decides that they must rescue the Doctor, because he seems to be the only man the Daleks are afraid of. After an abortive escape attempt, the Doctor is strapped down to a Dalek mind analysis device, where images of the Second and First Doctors confirm to the Daleks that he is indeed their sworn enemy. The Controller bursts in, saying that using the mind analysis device will kill the Doctor. They should keep the Doctor alive for information on the rebels, and he will question the Doctor personally. The Daleks gloat to the Doctor that they have discovered time travel, invaded Earth again, and changed the course of history. The Doctor calls the Controller a traitor, and the Controller explains that at the end of the 20th Century, a hundred years of devastating worldwide wars began, killing 7/8ths of the population and forcing the rest to live in little more than holes in the ground. It was during this period that the Daleks invaded, conquering the world and using it for raw materials to fuel the expansion of their empire. Some humans cooperated — the Controller's family have been officials for three generations. The Doctor calls them a family of quislings. The rebel guerrillas attack the Controller's base and rescue the Doctor. Monia is about to shoot the Controller but the Doctor tells him not to — the Daleks would have used somebody else in any case. The rebels take the Doctor back to their hideout and tell him the rest of the story. Styles organised the peace conference, and when Auderly House was blown up, everyone was killed. The rebels believe that Styles engineered the whole thing, and caused the century of war that followed. That was why they used Dalek-derived time travel technology to travel to the past, to kill Styles before he could destroy the peace conference. They used the tunnels because that is the only common location shared by the two time zones. The Doctor is sceptical, believing Styles to be stubborn but basically a good man. When the Doctor finds out that the rebels brought a bomb made of dalekanium with them, a powerful and unstable explosive that will affect even Dalek casings, he realises that the rebels are caught in a predestination paradox. They will cause the very explosion they went back in time to prevent, and create their own history. Indeed, back in the 20th Century, Shura has found his way into Auderly House and plants the bomb in the cellar. The Doctor and Jo make their way back to the tunnels so they can travel back and stop Shura, only to run into an ambush the Controller has set up. The Doctor convinces the Controller that he has the means to stop the Daleks even before they have begun, and the Controller lets him go, only to be betrayed by the interrogator and exterminated by the Daleks. The Daleks send a strike force to the 20th Century to ensure their version of the future is preserved, and attack as the delegates arrive at the house. In the ensuing battle between the Daleks, Ogrons and UNIT, the Brigadier evacuates the delegates. The Doctor, back in the present, makes his way down to the cellar to try to convince Shura not to activate the bomb; Auderly House is empty, it will all have been for nothing. However, once Shura hears that the Daleks are entering the house, he tells the Doctor and Jo to leave — he will take care of the Daleks. The Brigadier tells his men to fall back to the main road as the Daleks search the house for delegates. Shura detonates the bomb, destroying the house and everything in it. The Doctor tells Styles that it is now up to him to make the conference a success. Styles assures the Doctor it will be, because they know what will happen if they fail. The Doctor, nodding at Jo, says that they know too. [edit] Continuity
[edit] Production
[edit] Cast notes
[edit] In printThe novelisation of this serial, by Dicks, was published by Target Books in April 1974. There have been Dutch, Turkish, Japanese, Polish and Portuguese language editions. A Brazilian edition, separate from the Portuguese version, was published with the title Doutor Who e a Mudança da História (Doctor Who and the Change in History).
[edit] VHS, Laserdisc and DVD release
[edit] References
[edit] External links
[edit] Reviews
[edit] Target novelisation
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Sat, 10 September 2011
Notes to follow Sorry the dvd reviews are behind. they have been recorded but I have no room on my lybsyn account. |
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Sat, 10 September 2011
TDP 200: Torchwood Miracle Day Ep 9 and Ep 10 Review (Contains Spoilers for UK) Notes to follow |
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Wed, 7 September 2011
Reprinted from Wiki Pedia with all due respect "Night Terrors" is the ninth episode of the sixth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, and was first broadcast on BBC One and BBC America on 3 September 2011.
[edit] SynopsisThe Doctor decides to make a "house call" after his psychic paper receives a message from George, a frightened 8-year-old child, asking his help in getting rid of the monsters in his bedroom. On arrival at a council estate on present-day Earth, the Doctor, Amy, and Rory split up to try to locate the child. The Doctor, taking the guise of a social services worker, finds the right flat, and meets George's father, Alex, while his mother Claire is working a night shift. Through Alex's photo album, the Doctor learns that George has been frightened all his life, fearing many of the sounds and people around the flat and is helped to cope by various habits, including metaphorically placing his fears within his wardrobe. Meanwhile, Amy and Rory, while taking the lift down, suddenly find themselves in what appears to be an eighteenth-century house, but shortly discover most of the furnishings are wooden props. Other residents of the estate appear in the house, but are caught by life-sized peg dolls that laugh and sing like children, and transform the residents into more dolls. Amy and Rory witness one transformation and try to flee, but Amy is caught and becomes a doll herself, joining the others in chasing Rory. The Doctor, suspecting that the wardrobe is containing the evil that George fears, opens it to find its contents are simply clothes and toys, including a doll house. The Doctor suddenly recalls from Alex's photo album that Claire did not appear pregnant in the weeks leading up to George's supposed birth, causing Alex to remember the fact that Claire was unable to have children. The Doctor asserts that George is a Tenza child, an empathic alien who took on the form of Alex and Claire's desired child through a perception filter, and has the ability to literally lock away his fears within the wardrobe. George begins to panic from this revelation and the Doctor and Alex are pulled into the wardrobe, joining Rory in the dollhouse. As the dolls descend on the three, the Doctor calls out to George to face his fears; George is able to open the wardrobe and appears in the dollhouse, but the dolls turn to advance on him. The Doctor realises that George is still frightened that Alex and Claire plan to send him away, having mistakenly interpreted a conversation they had earlier that night; Alex rushes through the dolls to embrace George as his son. They all soon find themselves back at the estate, restored to normal. Claire returns the next morning to find George no longer scared while Alex and the Doctor make him breakfast. After being thanked, the Doctor rejoins his companions to set off for their next adventure. [edit] ContinuityThe Doctor refers to "Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday", "The Three Little Sontarans" and "The Emperor Dalek's New Clothes" as being among his childhood nursery stories, referencing the 1974 stage play Seven Keys to Doomsday[1] and the Sontarans and the Emperor Dalek, two of the series' recurring monsters. He also repeats his predilection for tea and Jammie Dodgers from another Gatiss-written episode, "Victory of the Daleks". He expresses his irritation that his sonic screwdriver still does not have "a setting for wood," a criticism also made by Rory in "The Hungry Earth" and "The Curse of the Black Spot" and by Donna Noble in "Silence in the Library". Rory states "we're dead again" after dropping down the lift shaft, referring to his previous deaths in "Amy's Choice", "Cold Blood", "The Curse of the Black Spot" and "The Doctor's Wife", and Amy's in "The Pandorica Opens". The episode's final shot continues the story arc for the second half of the series, showing the Teselecta file on the Doctor's date of death from "Let's Kill Hitler". [edit] Production
Mark Gatiss told Radio Times that he had always been scared of dolls, and was surprised that Doctor Who had never used them before. He was especially interested in peg dolls, which he said were "the stuff of proper nightmares".[2] In order to achieve a greater variety of stories in the first half of series 6 "Night Terrors" was moved to the second block of episodes, having been filmed as episode four.[3] This necessitated minor changes to the episode, including the removal of a sequence featuring Madame Kovarian.[1] [edit] BroadcastThe episode achieved an overnight figure of 5.5m viewers, with an audience share of 25.9%, and Doctor Who was the fourth most-watched programme for Saturday [edit] Critical receptionReception to the episode has been largely positive[4]. Assignment X gave a positive review "There’s plenty of tension to be had in awaiting the arrival of the episode’s central creatures – the creepiest dolls you will ever see. In fact, the horrific, bone-crunching transformation of human beings into dolls may trump the gas mask zombies as one of the most unsettling body horror moments in modern DOCTOR WHO. Amy’s scene is probably the most affecting, although it’s slightly undercut by the knowledge that she’s going to be all right."[5] Crave Online gave a positive review saying "This episode was reminiscent of "Fear Her," from the second season of the revived "Doctor Who." But "Night Terrors" fared a little bit better because it didn't rely on Jamie Oram's George to be anything more than a scared little boy. Matt Smith carried the day with another impressive outing as the Doctor. I think the key to Smith's tenure as the Doctor has been the sheer manic energy he throws into his performances. Some online commentators are already suggesting that the writer, Mark Gatiss might be the next showrunner after Steven Moffat."[6] Dan Martin of the Guardian also commented on the suggestions of Gatiss as a future showrunner, commenting that the episode was an improvement on Gatiss' previous two episodes ("The Idiot's Lantern" and "Victory of the Daleks"). He complimented it overall as "a classy, creepy episode of retro Doctor Who" in comparison to "Let's Kill Hitler", though he saw its plot as over-similar to "The Empty Child" and other episodes written by Steven Moffat[7]. [edit] References
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reprinted from wikipedia with thanks and respect "Let's Kill Hitler" is the eighth episode of the sixth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, and was first broadcast on BBC One, Space and BBC America on 27 August 2011. It is the second episode of a two-part story,[1] continuing stories from "A Good Man Goes to War".[2] It features alien time traveller the Doctor (Matt Smith) and his companions Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and her husband Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill), plus their daughter and the Doctor's sometimes-assistant River Song (Alex Kingston).
[edit] Plot[edit] PrequelOn 15 August 2011, the BBC released a short "prequel" to "Let's Kill Hitler", written by Steven Moffat.[3] This procedure had previously been done earlier in the series to give a short introduction to "The Impossible Astronaut", "The Curse of the Black Spot" and "A Good Man Goes to War".[4] In the prequel, Amy calls the Doctor and leaves a message for the Doctor on the TARDIS' answer phone, begging him to find her child, Melody. Though Amy knows Melody will grow up to be River Song, she does not want to miss seeing her grow up. As she ends her message, it is revealed that a very upset Doctor was listening but did not pick up the phone, even though Amy had pleaded for him to.[5][6][7] [edit] SynopsisIn modern-day Leadworth, Amy and Rory create a crop circle to gain the Doctor's attention. He arrives with his TARDIS, but they are soon joined by Mels, Amy and Rory's childhood friend who knows of Amy's "raggedy Doctor" and was responsible for Amy and Rory's relationship; Amy had subsequently named her daughter Melody after Mels. On the run from the police, Mels brandishes a gun and coerces them to escape in the TARDIS and "kill Hitler". Inside, she fires the gun, hitting the central console which fills the time machine with a poisonous gas and sends it out of control. Back in 1938 Berlin, "Justice Vehicle 6019", a Teselecta[8] robot manned by a human crew from the future miniaturised inside it and able to take on the appearance of other humans, is seeking to deliver justice on war criminals like Adolf Hitler. They do this by using the Teselecta's weapons to torture the criminal, near the end of their timeline. Having taken on the appearance of a Wehrmacht officer to meet with Hitler, they are surprised when the TARDIS crashes into Hitler's office. Hitler, already panicked, fires on the Teselecta, but his aim is poor and strikes Mels. As Rory locks Hitler in a cupboard, the TARDIS crew finds Mels regenerating, becoming the woman they know as River Song—Melody as a grown woman. River, having been trained by her captors to kill the Doctor, makes several attempts but the Doctor has taken precautions to nullify these. Instead, River kisses him and before disappearing into the streets of Berlin, reveals that her lipstick is a poison that will kill the Doctor within the hour and prevent his regeneration. The Doctor orders Amy and Rory to follow River, passing her his sonic screwdriver, while he returns to the TARDIS to try to discover a cure. The Teselecta, aware that the Doctor's death on 22 April 2011 is a "fixed point in time" ("The Impossible Astronaut"), instead follow Amy and Rory in chasing down River, having identified her as their most wanted war criminal, responsible for the Doctor's death. Amy and Rory chase River to a café at the Hotel Adlon, but the Teselecta arrives, bringing them aboard as allies, and takes on Amy's appearance, allowing the robot to get close to River to attack her. Before they can complete the attack, the TARDIS materialises; the Doctor, spurred on by the TARDIS' "voice interface" hologram of Amy's younger self, Amelia, has found time to dress for the period and stops the attack, now aware of the Teselecta's nature. The captain speaks to the Doctor, informing him that River has been trained to kill him by the Silence, a religious order that believes that "when the oldest question hidden in plain sight" is asked, silence will fall across the universe. When the crew refuse backing down from attacking River, Amy uses the sonic screwdriver to turn the robot's "antibodies"—its security robots—against the crew. The crew power down the robot and are teleported away by a mothership, leaving Amy and Rory to face the antibodies. The Doctor finds himself too weak from the poison's effects to pilot the TARDIS to rescue his companions; River is inspired by the Doctor's sympathy, and finds herself guided by the TARDIS itself to pilot the ship, and rescues Amy and Rory in time. On returning to the café, the Doctor whispers something in River's ear before he passes away. River asks Amy who River Song is; Amy uses the Teselecta to show River her form stored in the robot's database of who she is to become. With this, River sacrifices her remaining regenerations to bring the Doctor back to life, and passes out. The Doctor, Amy, and Rory take her to a hospital in the far future, leaving the TARDIS-shaped diary as a gift by her bedside, and depart. Later, River is shown becoming an archaeologist so she can find the Doctor herself. Aboard the TARDIS, the Doctor has discovered the date of his death from the records aboard the Teselecta, but does not reveal this knowledge to Amy or Rory. [edit] ContinuityThis episodes alludes to several previous elements of the River Song character, several which include ontological paradoxes. River reveals herself as the young girl seen regenerating at the end of "Day of the Moon" before she became Mels, short for Melody; Mels' name would used in turn by Amy to name her daughter. River's ability to regenerate is a result of being a "child of the TARDIS", from the infusion of Time Lord DNA into Melody during her conception aboard the TARDIS on Amy and Rory's wedding night as described in "A Good Man Goes to War".[9] Later, when regenerating into the form of River Song, she learns of this name from the Doctor and Amy. River's TARDIS-coloured diary, which the Doctor and his companions have seen in River's relative future, is given to her anew by the Doctor. The Doctor further introduces River to the concept of "spoilers" of her future timeline, a phrase River has used in previous adventures. River's aptitude with flying the TARDIS, taught to her by the machine itself, is alluded to from "The Time of Angels" where River explains she "had lessons from the very best" (which the Doctor has assumed referred to himself).[10] During the moments after her initial regeneration into the River Song form, River reenacts the iconic scene between Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft) and Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) from the movie The Graduate, calling out to the Doctor "Hello, Benjamin".[11] The Doctor likens River to Mrs Robinson in "The Impossible Astronaut".[12] The Teselecta crew consider River a wanted dangerous criminal; River has been shown to be imprisoned in her personal future in "The Time of Angels" for killing "the best man she ever knew".[13] In the episode's epilogue, River is shown asking Professor Candy of Luna University to become an archaeologist as to find the Doctor; previous episodes that take place later in River's personal timeline show that she has acquired these degrees. Both the professor and the university appeared previously in Steven Moffat's 1997 Doctor Who short story Continuity Errors, which showed Candy as having himself conducted research concerning the Doctor. The concept of "fixed points in time" has been explored before, including the episodes "The Fires of Pompeii" and "The Waters of Mars". The supposed "state of temporal grace" within the TARDIS was previously alluded to by the Fourth Doctor during The Hand of Fear. Like River giving up her remaining regenerations for the Doctor, the Doctor has been shown prepared to do this to save his companions during the Fifth Doctor serial, Mawdryn Undead. While bringing up the voice interface aboard the TARDIS, the Doctor is shown holograms of his former companions Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) and Donna Noble (Catherine Tate).[14] He rejects these, as they all cause him guilt, eventually settling on the young Amelia. She also appears in flashback scenes from Amy's past interacting with a younger Mels and Rory, revisiting the various toys and props Amelia created of her "raggedy Doctor" shown throughout series 5. The Amelia hologram refers back to "fish fingers and custard", a phrase used between Amelia and the Doctor during "The Eleventh Hour" and "The Impossible Astronaut". The Silence are revealed not to be a species as shown in "The Impossible Astronaut" and "Day of the Moon", but a religious order who believe silence will fall when "the oldest question in the universe" is asked.[15] They are also revealed to be responsible for training Melody to assassinate the Doctor. The Eleventh Doctor wears his secondary jacket, a long dark-green military overcoat, for the first time in this episode.[11] [edit] ProductionThe read-through for "Let's Kill Hitler" took place on 21 March 2011.[12] The opening scene in the cornfield were the last shots filmed of the series on 11 July 2011.[12][16] The Temple of Peace in Cardiff used in the episode for the German dinner party, was also used for Karen Gillan's first Doctor Who appearance, when she played a Soothsayer in "The Fires of Pompeii".[17] Exterior shots of the Hotel Adlon were filmed outside Southampton Guildhall. One scene involving the Teselecta (disguised as a German soldier) chasing Amy and Rory on motorcycles through Berlin was cut from filming due to budget issues. AT&T, who wanted to advertise in the United States broadcast of the episode on BBC America as a tie-in to their "Rethink possible" slogan, brought the idea of using a motion comic to create a bridging scene within the advertising break where this scene would have been placed. AT&T and BBC America worked with Moffat and Senior to create the 60 second scene, which was animated by Double Barrel Motion Labs. The scene will be included in all international home video releases of the episode, though lacking the AT&T branding used on the initial broadcast.[18] [edit] Broadcast and reception"Let's Kill Hitler" was first broadcast on 27 August 2011 on BBC One in the United Kingdom.[19] Internationally, it was broadcast in America on sister station BBC America on 27 August[20] as well as on Space in Canada.[21] Overnight ratings showed that the episode was watched by 6.2 million viewers on BBC One, the second most viewed show of the day behind The X-Factor and the second most-viewed Doctor Who episode in Series 6 behind "The Impossible Astronaut". The episode also came in a number one on the BBC iPlayer service the day after it aired.[22] The episode also received an Appreciation Index of 85.[23] [edit] Critical receptionThe episode received generally positive reviews from critics. Dan Martin, writing for The Guardian, was more pleased with "Let's Kill Hitler" as an opener than "A Good Man Goes to War" as a finale, and said it was "an energetic, timey-wimey tour de force with with gags and flourishes like the car and the crop circles that still maintained a strong sense of what it was about". He also commended Alex Kingston's performance, saying that "she got to steal her every scene even more completely than usual, masterfully swerving the episode into a properly emotional final act".[14] Michael Hogan of The Daily Telegraph gave the episode four out of five stars, praising it for being "jam-packed full of ideas, twists, turns and wibbly-wobbly time-bending stuff" and "giddily thrilling entertainment, albeit rather exhausting". He also praised the way it allowed Rory to "finally find his niche".[11] Writing for The Independent, Neela Debnath praised the lighter mood and "great slapstick moments". Though she thought the identity of Mels was "obvious to everyone but the characters", she said that Toussaint-White was "excellent" and that "it was shame that she regenerated so early on because she brought a different energy to the character".[15] Radio Times reviewer Patrick Mulkern, unlike Debnath, admitted that Mels' true identity "took [him] completely by surprise". He thought that a plot hole was generated in terms of what Melody did in between regenerating in 1969 and joining Amy and Rory, still as a child, 20 years later, but said that "the episode moves too fast for such quibbles to stick, and it is hilarious".[24] Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly called it "a marvelously energetic, funny, clever, noble mid-season start" and praised the acting of Smith, Gillan, Darvill, and particularly Kingston, as well as the emotion that developed in the episode.[25] IGN's Matt Risley gave the episode a score of 9 out of 10, saying that it was "arguably Moffat's most unashamedly fun Time Lord romp yet". While he praised the humour, plot, and character development, he was critical of the Teselecta; though they "score[ed] high on the sci-fi kitsch factor" they were "anything but memorable".[26] SFX magazine critic Richard Edwards gave "Let's Kill Hitler" five out of five stars, thinking it "has to rank among the cleverest Who episodes Moffat has ever written". While he praised Kingston's performance, he wrote that "it's Matt Smith who steals the show, in one of his finest performances as the Doctor...he's utterly magnificent, whether acting the joker, or living out 32 minutes (ish) of death scene. The mix of optimism...and sadness is a tricky thing to pull off, yet Smith does it in a quintessentially Doctor way".[27] Keith Phipps of The A.V. Club graded the episode as a B+, saying that he was "a bit divided". He praised Moffat's River Song arc, which made "the mind [reel]...in a good way", as well as the dialogue and "big concepts". On the other hand, he did not think the Teselecta's mission was developed and "as characters they seem kind of bland". What "really [troubled]" him was that it did not have the "impact" of some previous episodes and he thought it unlikely that Amy and Rory were willing to quickly accept that they were meant to raise their daughter as a school friend.[13] Gavin Fuller of The Daily Telegraph said the Moffat "delivered a pacy romp" and praised the concept of the Teselecta, but was disappointed with the "wasted opportunity" of the setting. He thought that the setting offered "great dramatic potential" but was "little more than window dressing for the story". He thought that using Hitler as a comic relief "struck a wrong note given the nature of the man and the regime he led" and that it was "an odd way to treat such an historically significant character". He was also critical of Moffat's "seeming keenness to kill the regular cast in some way, shape or form".[28] Entertainment Weekly's Tucker thought that it "didn't need Hitler to be an excellent [Doctor Who] episode".[25] Assignment X gave a negative review of the episode: "Matt Smith is wonderful as always and I love his new coat. And there ends the positive part of this review."[29] Jim Shelley of The Daily Mirror also was negative about the episode, especially towards Alex Kingston, who appeared to be acting while "the rest of the cast play their parts perfectly naturally".[30] [edit] References
[edit] External links
Direct download: TDP_197_lets_kill_Hitler_and_torchwood_.mp3
Category:podcast -- posted at: 4:33am UTC |
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